Food truck vendors in limbo as Brampton ends pilot on short notice | CBC News

The City of Brampton has asked truck vendors to vacate a designated area downtown, after it revoked their permits to operate and shut down a pilot project following complaints from restaurants in the area. 

The Downtown Brampton Business Improvement Area (BIA) says restaurateurs wanted the growing attraction shut because it’s more competition for their businesses, which are still struggling to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But the food truck operators say the move will cost them thousands and make Brampton’s core a ghost town again. 

Mohamad Hanif founded the area known as the Downtown Brampton Food District. He said he spent $100,000 transforming the McArter Lane parking lot into a patio-style space for nine colourful food trucks after the area was approved for a pilot project by the city in February last year, with no set date to end.

“It’s really been upside down here for us,” Hanif told CBC Toronto.

“We need to operate, we need to run our business like everybody else,” he said through tears. 

The operators estimate they welcome about 2,000 customers every week. Hanif said the BIA pulling the endorsement and prompting the city to shut down the trucks has led to “a lot of unknowns” about their future. 

“The BIA makes me feel like they are the landlord and I am the tenant after owning this property for 26 years,” he said.

Last year, the food district pilot project received the BIA’s endorsement, which was required for vendors to receive a permit to operate. But the group pulled its endorsement in April and asked the city to follow suit, after restaurants complained about “cleanliness, environmental issues and direct competition,” according to their meeting minutes.

Brampton’s BIA and the two councillors who sit on its board of directors — Dennis Keenan and Paul Vicente — did not respond to requests for comment.

After the city ordered trucks to move out of the boundary, the BIA and some downtown business owners asked the city to end its support for the vendors.

Carrie Percival, who is the chair of the BIA, told city council that the group worked “diligently” to support food trucks in the initial phases but wanted the city to look into the “implications of extending the pilot” without support from all stakeholders.

“The current shameful aesthetics appearance of the area with multiple closed trucks, dilapidated cars and increased litter all have consequences for the active an inviting lanes that we all have invested in in the last three years,” she said.

During that meeting on June 26, several councillors complained that most of the food served in the food-truck district was Indian. And while Mayor Patrick Brown proposed adding a non-compete clause to the pilot, vendors said that wouldn’t be helpful. 

Hanif called allegations about cleanliness false. He said there is a designated garbage area for trucks to ensure the area remains clean. And while eight trucks sold Indian food, he made sure their menus were different.

Restaurateurs, food truck owner at odds

Bhupinder Singh says he and his siblings left their jobs and spent over $100,000 to start their food truck, Swaad, last December.

Singh said Swaad had just started becoming popular weeks before it was shut. Since then, he said he has been scrambling to find a new location and permit for his truck while bills pile up. 

“I don’t have money,” he said. “It’s very stressful. My sister had a panic attack. I was in the hospital two days back. The situation my whole family is going through — it’s a very hard time for us.”

Singh said concerns about competition shouldn’t be grounds for closing businesses in a free economy.

“There are a lot of restaurants over here. You cannot shut down the place if they have the problem that their sale is down,” he said.

But Navneet Singh Lotey, who owns the restaurant Tadka King, says his sales have gone down 60 per cent since the food-truck district opened. 

Singh Lotey’s restaurant is walking distance from there. He said he’s had to deal with customers from food trucks using his restaurant’s washroom and taking up street parking his patrons would want. 

“They just stole our business,” he said during a delegation on the matter at city hall last month.

The BIA’s meeting minutes from March 2023 show businesses were “angry at the BIA for approving this project,” after the association issued an endorsement in February. 

In mid-June, the city notified the vendors that they needed to remove their food trucks from the property within 15 days. After being shut for two weeks, a court decision allowed the businesses to reopen until a hearing is held on July 26.

City, BIA point fingers on responsibility

When food truck vendors asked the BIA for more time to relocate, the BIA told them they wouldn’t be able to help as it is a bylaw issue, according to an email viewed by CBC Toronto. 

At a city council meeting on Wednesday, vendors were told it is in the BIA’s hands to make decisions on endorsements that are required for food trucks to operate within the BIA’s boundaries.

“This is their property, their pilot project and their agreement,” Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown told CBC Toronto in an email. 

He said the city “legally” has to go with the BIA’s decision, even though the BIA is created and governed by the municipality.

But Coun. Martin Medeiros said it was ultimately the city’s decision and that he is “sympathetic” to the restaurateurs downtown.

“The feedback I received from the restaurant owners [was] that because of all the construction [and] because of the numerous projects in the downtown, they’ve been already suffering,” he said. 

Medeiros says while it’s “really unfortunate” for the food truck vendors, “this was a pilot project and to my knowledge, it was never intended to be something permanent.”